soupface

Good observation; and I agree with your conclusion. Movies tell you what to look at, how long to look at it, etc. Games can't do that, really; they afford different kinds of experiences. It might be possible to inject some sort of tension into that situation by adding a shootout golf-meter or something, but it won't be the same. Nor should they be the same. I'm not at all keen on the "Citizen Kane/Godfather/Weekend at Bernie's of games" concept. When Citizen Kane was made, people weren't looking for (nor trying for) the Impression, soleil levant of movies—because that's fuggin' ridiculous. If the two media were so easy to compare, then what would be the Deus Ex of movies or the Tetris of film? I mean, the same hollow mimicry of the surface elements—and the subsequent failure to translate what's good about the original experience—happens when you try to make a game of a film film of a game ( ).I only sound so mad because you reminded me of Gun. I really wanted to like that game. I really did.

I'm not sure whether this is the same video one of your listeners was asking about (the "shit no" one), but, yeah, . (The YouTube embed didn't work.)I wish that she had spoken more about making the player a part of things. She said "player-centred" but didn't really talk much about what the player does, only about making the player feel like they're part of the story, as if the story came first. I think that, well-written or not, the story in Mirror's Edge just didn't work: the world wasn't well established and the plot felt separate from the game. The cutscenes (which looked totally different from the game in which I could do things, took place in locations and starred characters that I would never go to or interact with in the game) encouraged me to "just sit back watch" the story happen. (The bits that happened in-game, from my perspective, worked well enough, and those worked well enough to set up boss battles or extended chase sequences—things that I got to do—but there weren't many of those.)

That's some nice album art, that is. Thumbs up, Jake (I would assume you're responsible for it).Also, Cool Tools! pEwjV5wt7ns

Whoa, someone else played Anachronox? That makes, like, almost a dozen of us. It did have quite a bit of padding though. Remember the routubes and museum ducts? Those crystal caves full of glarebears? Anachronox is an excellent game nonetheless; it's the best Japanese-style RPG I've played.

I've been meaning to check this out since I read the CarneyVale team's postmortem. Seems interesting.

Lots of questions to be asked (How, when, and where was data collected? What counts as a game? How does this compare to TV, sports, boardgames, etc.?) about these facts. I thought that it was interesting that they claim "women age 18 or older represent a significantly greater portion of the game-playing population (33%) than boys age 17 or younger (18%)."

ZOMG, the list of games discussed are now links. Here's to minor site improvements! (AR internet dude says: The title property of the masthead image—this one: http://www.idlethumbs.net/images/minipod_title.gif—still says that y'all "proably" all about video games.)

Man, you guys are really milkin' this. Also, in Toronto, Loblaws appears to be the only supermarket that carries the Saputo cheese strings. (Yes, I went to several supermarkets to try and find me a cheap copy of BG&E.)

There was a re-release thing going on around the turn of the century. Unreal, Dungeon Keeper, Tomb Raider, Alien vs. Predator, Thief, and Age of Empires were all re-released in "gold" editions (which, in some cases, just meant "patched"). Does that happen much nowadays? To me, this marketing strategy seems to have faded some.

Played the F.E.A.R. 2 demo recently, and enjoyed it quite a bit. The environments seemed much more varied, textured, richer, and the enemies more intelligent, than those in F.E.A.R.. (I should mention that I've played about as much F.E.A.R. 2 as I have F.E.A.R.: twenty minutes.) Oh, and it's pretty scary, if you're willing to get into it—that is, it's scary until you get into the giant mech battlesuit with unlimited ammunition. There are some locations or moments in which the environment becomes evil (full of fire, twisted trees, etc.) that reminded me of American McGee's Alice and Undying. Anyone a fan of F.E.A.R.? Did the F.E.A.R. 2 demo make any impression on you? Is it worth my while to play through F.E.A.R. before trying out the sequel?

According to Wikipedia:

Wait—this isn't a joke? Even if things were tighter, should Metacritic scores remain as important as they are now? I understand that, in business, "what gets measured, gets done," but there must be better ways for publishers and developers to discover and compare the critical success of their games, ways that do not misinterpret or oversimplify. High Metacritic scores should not be confused for, nor accepted as, critical success (link to further ranting on measures and "key performance indicators").

Were there not commercial VGA adapters for the Dreamcast? I would search eBay for those before modding the system myself.

Holy balls, I was F5-ing idlethumbs.net most of Wednesday. I was afraid I was going to go a week without your hot pod. Don't scare me like that. You've confirmed my suspicions about F.E.A.R. 2, and articulated some of my frustrations with crappy triggered events in Halo 3, among others. Having to start or stay in the Warthog or having to run back to trigger something after having rushed by it really bugged me (esp. when it looked like I could continue on foot, but would, minutes later, be killed by a scripted event). I guess I love to hear what I think, but in your voices—with police sirens, and with occasional static.

http://www.gamestyleguide.com/ Pissing on the embers of this discussion, I know.

The Game Developers' Choice and the Indie Games Festival are the ones to watch. The rest aren't anything much, are they?

There's an interesting interview with the creator, Jenova Chen, on CBC's Spark. Man, it's stuff like Flower that makes me want a PS3. If only I could find one with hardware PS2 compatibility.

Hardly a ringing endorsement. I'll just try to convince one of my friends to buy it so I can borrow it later. That makes sense. I enjoyed the demo, but I was playing co-op, not single-player. If you're right, LetterT, it's yet another reason to convince a friend to buy it: so we can play through together.

So, what would you imagine Resident Evil 5 would play like to someone that hasn't played Resident Evil 4 (and only about ten minutes of Resident Evil — Code: Veronica)? It may be a let down for those that have followed the series, but is it so bad that even those intrigued by the demo should stay away? Edit: Ends up that "piqued" was not the best word to use here. For future reference: "piqued" != "piqued my interest"

It wouldn't surprise me if these "hit start" screens are vestigial hold overs from the arcade era. I mean, when not being played, arcade games would go into "attract mode," playing short recorded demos (and occasionally flashing those "Winners Don't Use Drugs" screens) between prompts to insert coins. Early console games did this too (I remember watching Earthworm Jim's attract mode through a store window while waiting for my parents at the mall), except that instead of asking for coins, they'd prompt players to hit start. I don't know of any recent console releases that have an attract mode (or idle demo, or screen saver); game stores run trailers and commercials, and what systems they have running are for playing, not watching. There might be some other function these screens serve, but, yeah, they seem unnecessary now.

Here's a . You're welcome, lazy folks that do not read Kotaku.

Spaff's anecdote reminds me of my friend's experience playing Quake. While playing, a fly landed on the monitor. He wanted to get rid of it, but his reflexes were still Quake'd: he snapped the mouse up in an attempt to centre his (player character's) view on the fly and shot off a few rockets. It took a second for him to realize that he couldn't shoot the fly on his monitor as he had been shooting characters in the game.

I dunno about Hitman, but Deus Ex used the Unreal Engine's music system which was essentially a tracker: a sequence of short samples and simple effects. (Supposedly, Unreal's .umx files are similar to .mod files. Yeah, .mod files.) If an iMuse-like system were to be made today, I would think a tracker-like soundtrack system would work best. Synthesized instrumentation (à la Monkey Island 2 and other MIDI stuff) has a very limited (read: retro) sound, and using fully produced recordings (MP3, OGG, CD audio, etc.) would not allow for much beyond fading in and out of a few pre-recorded pieces of music.

That was the most frustrating aspect of the game. Wandering NPC's might make the world seem a little more real, sure, but NPC hunting is a pain in the butt. Seems like exactly the feature that looks good on paper, but wouldn't have (shouldn't have?) survived prototyping or QA. Decent dialogue though.

More than a little like Limbo, and kinda like Patapon.